Archive of Our Own

Aizawa Shouta had gotten two new students with the Sports Festival — why not, after all? He had two empty spaces, and they had taken the first and second place on the podium. They had both worked relentlessly with a hero mentor Aizawa trusted to prepare them, and Hizashi felt they were both ready. Shouta would agree with that assessment.

But here’s the thing.

Something was off with one of them.

Not Shinsou Hitoshi. Every day, Shinsou came in well-kept, clean and fresh, and he did seem overly tired often, but that was an expected drawback of his Quirk. Shinsou seemed a bit suspicious of some of his classmates, but Shouta expected a student with a ‘villainous’ Quirk to be slow to trust — Shouta was well-informed on discrimination in general, wanting to know what to expect his students to have experienced, but he’d experienced this type of discrimination first-hand, and while he experienced it less now that he was a hero, those experiences did still shape him during his formative years.

Despite this mistrust, he did have some friendships, his most notable ones being with Todoroki Shouto and Midoriya Izuku, of course, as they had been friends prior to the transfer, but the group seemed to have started a budding friendship with Yaoyorozu from day one, and they had friendly interactions with Tokoyami, Shouji and Kouda, occasionally joining them for lunch. Shouta expected them to eventually have a full friend group to lean on, which was a good sign.

He’d checked into Shinsou’s familial background as well, and couldn’t find anything at all of concern. Shinsou Hitoshi was an adopted child — he’d been abandoned by his birth parents a year after his Quirk came in because of Quirk discrimination, and adopted two years later by his two mothers, Shinsou Toku and Nemu. Toku had a Quirk that allowed her to temporarily paralyze people by singing to them, and Nemu had a Quirk that made her only need four hours of sleep a night.

Having both experienced Quirk discrimination, and Toku having a Quirk that was similar to Shinsou’s, they had felt a connection with the kid instantly and had quickly known he was the one. It was clear when looking into Shinsou’s history that he was well cared for in his home, and when Shouta had spoken with them to complete the transfer, they were delighted and supportive of their son — Toku, an ex-Underground herself, had expressed particular delight for her son finally getting to follow his dream, patting Shinsou’s back gently and kissing his forehead. Shinsou had reacted in an appropriate manner, looking slightly embarrassed but happy and not at all uncomfortable.

No, Shouta did not worry too much about Shinsou Hitoshi adjusting to the class. He didn’t worry that something was wrong at home at all.

But Midoriya Izuku... he came into class each day looking more and more run down and tired, and it had only been three weeks. His hair was unkempt in a way it hadn’t been before, either looking greasy, matted and unwashed, or frizzy and improperly cared for. In heroics class, Midoriya tended to slip up and use a fighting style that reminded Shouta distinctly of a certain vigilante — and certainly not the style Hizashi taught him. Oh, he tried, he’d go back and forth, and he was competent in both, but when push came to shove, when he was really feeling like he was in danger of losing — he turned to what was natural, and it wasn’t what Hizashi taught him, and that was telling enough.

After physical heroics lessons or any training sessions, Midoriya would spend longer than any other student in the showers. Kirishima had come to him expressing concern because Midoriya did not seem to have proper shower supplies, only ever going in with a bar of soap and nothing more. His uniforms were clean, but Midoriya himself often wasn’t, and the uniforms were often wrinkled. Shouta knew for a fact that the only reason the boy still bothered to wear a tie each day was due to Todoroki digging through Midoriya’s over-packed bookbag and putting it on the boy for him while he was barely awake each morning.

Shouta didn’t think it was that the classwork was too difficult for him or anything like that, because in General Education, he’d been consistently at the top of his class. In fact, he continued to produce the same level of schoolwork that he had before transferring, despite looking more and more tired each day. The boy arrived at school with Todoroki each morning, and Todoroki would usher him into his seat behind Shinsou and in front of Yaoyorozu, where Midoriya would proceed to fall asleep and sleep through Tenya’s lectures about how disrespectful it was — a true talent, as Tenya was quite loud — and only wake up right before class, for Todoroki and Shinsou to give him some hair pets and Todoroki to put the tie on.

Then he spends all of homeroom working on schoolwork or studying like he’s supposed to, but he always looks like he’s about to fall asleep the whole time. According to some of the students, he spends half of the lunch period sleeping as well, eating either a lunch purchased by Todoroki or packed by Shinsou, then sleeping right in the middle of the cafeteria.

Unsurprisingly, this meant that Midoriya’s social life was suffering, and while he remained incredibly close with Shinsou and Todoroki to the point where Shouta suspected that the three were well on the way to becoming romantic partners, he was not very popular in class. He was friendly with the same people as Shinsou, and surprisingly, Monoma Neito from Class 1-B, but because he sleeps through most of his lunch, he misses out on a lot of opportunities to actually talk to them and build the relationships.

Then there’s the issue with Bakugou, who keeps calling Midoriya “Deku”, which is clearly an insult. Shouta’s already had to give out several detentions for that, and Bakugou has started begrudgingly calling Midoriya by his last name, though he sounds like he wants to commit a murder each time he does. Shouta suspects if they’ve spent anytime alone, Bakugou has definitely returned right back to Deku this, Deku that. There’s some history there, and it’s not pretty, whatever it is. So far, Shouta hasn’t had the time to look into it — he’d have to do some real digging, as he already remembers Bakugou’s student file as being remarkably clean. The only thing he’s been able to do is switch Shinsou and Midoriya’s seats so Bakugou and Midoriya aren’t directly next to each other and forbid them from being assigned to work together.

Yes, it’s clear — something is wrong with Midoriya Izuku.

When he looked into Midoriya’s home life, it was clear from the beginning that there were issues. Shortly after the age Midoriya would have learned of his Quirklessness, his father got a job in America, and has not once returned to Japan. When Shouta did some more digging, looking into the man’s social medias and such, he found that Midoriya Hisashi was a Quirk Supremacist of the worst sort, and it was likely that if Midoriya had had any contact with Hisashi at all, it was unlikely to be positive or loving.

Then there was the interesting little detail that Midoriya’s emergency contact after Midoriya Inko was listed as Bakugou Mitsuki. When Shouta sent an email out to her, probing, Mitsuki praised ‘little Izu-kun’ and it was infantilizing, which Shouta didn’t approve of, considering the kid was quite the powerhouse, but other than that little bump, she gushed about how ‘even though my Katsuki doesn’t get along with Inko’s boy anymore’ both her and her husband were delighted and proud to see the boy take the win in the Sports Festival, and they were happy to hear he was getting into the heroics course, since they knew it’d been his dream since he was ‘just a little tyke in diapers playing in the mud with their brat’.

It was enlightening, for sure — Midoriya and Bakugou probably could not remember a time where they did not know each other, based on what Mitsuki had said in her email. And she, at least, was aware of the fact that the two did not get along, meaning it was not some great secret, but she still remained one of Midoriya’s emergency contacts, and referred to him in affectionate and familiar ways.

It was a complicated puzzle, that was for sure.

He’d also, of course, met with Midoriya Inko to complete the transfer. From the beginning, the experience was interesting. The two Midoriyas did not come to the meeting together. Midoriya Izuku arrived first, fifteen minutes early, wearing his school uniform though school had long ended, and he’d long since left campus. He watched the door and the clock with increasing levels of anxiety, twisting together first his fingers, then seeming to remember the tangle that Shouta remembered Hizashi mentioned gifting to Izuku a while ago. He bit his lip raw. He carried his schoolbag for some reason, far more filled than Shouta had ever seen it when he’d passed the boy in the halls, and he was the one with the signed transfer papers, in a folder which he clutched to his chest like it was the most precious possession in the world.

When Shouta discreetly compared them to the initial enrollment papers in his file, the signatures matched up nearly perfectly — he didn’t think this was a forgery.

In direct juxtaposition to her son, Midoriya Inko arrived nearly thirty minutes late, not an apology to be found on her tongue. She looked over at her child and there was clear disappointment and shame on her face. Izuku shrunk into his seat under her gaze, looking like he was trying to disappear. Inko expressed she didn’t really even want Izuku to do this at all, and Izuku’s face twisted at that, anger and disappointment — but not a bit of surprise.

Apparently, she had promised to let him take part in the heroics course (and ultimately she still followed through, despite not really wanting to), if he agreed to something that neither of them were giving any hints on but Shouta didn’t think it was anything good — and now that he’d had Midoriya as a student for three weeks, alarm bells were really going off in his head.

All the signs were pointing to something being awfully, terribly wrong with Midoriya Izuku, and needed to find out before it was too late — before his student got hurt.

———

Ever since Midoriya had gotten permission to transfer into heroics, something had changed and not in a good way — Hizashi thought of all the statistics for Quirkless people and was scared for his protégé. Something had changed.

He’d done his looking into the Midoriya family before and he was positive that while Midoriya Inko was a bad mother emotionally, the home was at least relatively safe. There was a roof over his head, food and physical safety. Inko was not the type to raise a hand to her child; she only hurt him with her words. Because of discrimination, no court was going to take that seriously, even if a reasonably high ranked hero like Present Mic was the one to bring it up.

On top of that, the system was a dangerous place to be for the Quirkless, and if Hizashi was to start something that would get Midoriya into the system, he’d have to talk Shouta into adopting a child, and it really would have to be adoption, because Hizashi wouldn’t want to risk having something non-permanent and having someone take Izuku away and throwing him back into the system.

So he’d just watched, for the time being, and provided where he could what Midoriya Inko did not — but now something had changed, Hizashi just knew it.

The first thing he’d noticed was the way Midoriya sat in English class looking barely awake, came to their training sessions looking more and more tired, more and more rumpled, more and more uncared for. His moves got more sloppy. And strangely, though they’d trained a lot with punches, his student started using more kicks, an entirely different fighting style — and was reasonably competent, despite his clear exhaustion.

And don’t get Hizashi wrong — he was happy that their training had paid off, and his two students were transferred over, but it meant he saw them less.

It meant he could notice less.

So if he saw this much, what was he not seeing?

He weedled details from Shouta, from the other teachers. Everyone said the same things; high grades, but unkempt uniform and hair, doesn’t interact with his classmates much outside of Shinsou and Todoroki, sleeps as much as he can during the day.

Shouta told him all about his alarming meeting with Midoriya Inko to transfer her son into heroics, the mentions of a promise, that Midoriya Izuku had promised his mother something but what that something was, no one but the Midoriyas knew. It was clear that Shouta believed if he found out what this secret something was, he’d find out what was wrong with their student.

Hizashi was inclined to agree — it was a puzzle that they needed to piece together fast, because three weeks ago, Midoriya Izuku was a lively student who smiled constantly and participated in class and now Midoriya looked like he was barely hanging on by a thread.

Everything pointed to something being completely, awfully wrong with Midoriya Izuku and Hizashi needed to find out what it was — Hizashi needed to make sure his boy was okay, needed his boy to be happy and healthy, and it was clear he wasn’t.

———

Hitoshi thought that when they transferred over to the heroics course, everything would get better — not that it was bad before, but he thought the two of them in heroics meant everything would be amazing from then on, and it should have been! They were in a class taught by Eraserhead, one of the best in Underground heroics, and now they were in a class with their other best friend, so their trio was no longer separated. They could spend equal amounts of time together — they were even seated fairly close; Shouto was only a seat away. Their only fear had been that Yamada-sensei would no longer want to mentor them, but he still kept them on as protégés and even continued to let Shouto join their training sessions often.

Things should have been better! This should have been the time of their lives!

And yet...

Something was wrong with Izuku. Something was really wrong, and Hitoshi didn’t know what to do. It was a lot of little things and some of them all showed up at once and some of them built up and some of them didn’t. One day, Izuku stopped bringing his lunch or money to buy lunch — but Shouto didn’t bat an eye, buying lunch for them both without hesitation. When it happened once, Hitoshi wrote it off as a fluke, but when it happened several days in a row, Hitoshi thought maybe Izuku’s family was having money problems, so he told his moms that one of his friends was having money problems and they were taking turns providing lunch for them, and his moms started packing a second bento for him some days.

Then there was the change in hygiene. Izuku used to be flawlessly dressed when it came to his uniform — except for his inability to tie a tie. It would be neatly pressed, creased in all the right spots. Now it was crumpled, and he didn’t even try to do the ties. Shouto would do them every morning, and the ties were always the most wrinkled of the bunch. Sometimes Izuku would come to school having clearly not bathed, and other days he came to class and the curls that used to be soft and well cared for were now a frizzy, dry mess, sticking up almost like Hitoshi’s own hair but with none of the gel. Hitoshi would hold Izuku’s hands and even his nails were too long and not cared for.

And as much as that worried Hitoshi, what worried him far more was the way it was clear he wasn’t sleeping — Hitoshi’s Quirk meant that he was always a little tired, but it also meant that his body was used to that, that it was made for that.

Izuku was not made for lack of sleep, and it showed. He always slept as soon as he arrived in the mornings — in fact, he slept whenever they weren’t doing something, whenever he could get away with it. They had lunch outside some days, and let Izuku nap in their laps far more often. They went out for boba after studying less and went to a cat cafe where Izuku would fall asleep on one of them covered in cats more often. And at the end of it all, Izuku would leave with Shouto —

And that was another thing. Hitoshi had noticed Izuku had started coming to school with Shouto, started going home with Shouto. Shouto had invited them over for the past three Sundays, making up various reasons for why Endeavor wouldn’t be around, though his sister would. And Hitoshi knew they didn’t live near each other, and he knew there was no way Endeavor was letting someone Quirkless come to his home every day, so the thing with Izuku always coming to school with Shouto and leaving at the end of the day with Shouto...

Something was wrong with Izuku, and Hitoshi was pretty sure Shouto knew what it was.

Truthfully, that idea hurt him. The idea that Izuku didn’t trust him with whatever was wrong. But Hitoshi also knew Izuku, and he knew that Izuku always had a reason for everything, and cruelty, meanness — those were never reasons. Izuku didn’t do things with the sole purpose of hurting. If he was leaving Hitoshi out, if he was not telling Hitoshi something, it was not with the intention of hurting Hitoshi.

And really, it was hard to be mad at Izuku when every day, even though he had stopped smiling so much, he still smiled brightly at Hitoshi and Hitoshi alone like he was someone precious.

But all the same, Hitoshi just knew something was really wrong with Izuku, and if he just could figure it out, then he’d be able to help, too. So even though Izuku had his reasons for hiding... Hitoshi had his for searching.

———

When Shouto was younger, he used to wish he was Quirkless like his brother Natsuo. Then his father would pay a little less attention to him. He’d been just a little kid then. He hadn’t understood what it really meant to be Quirkless — not that he would ever claim to have a true, full understanding now, but he’d only had a childish view then, tainted further by the fact that they had money and that bought them things that most Quirkless people didn’t have access to. Natsuo didn’t go to the clinics, or wear the red shoes, unless he felt like wearing the red shoes for stylistic reasons or for the rare protests he snuck out to. Endeavor’s money meant that he had custom shoes and private doctors that ‘overlooked’ his Quirk status.

Endeavor’s money meant he never had to wonder if he would be able to get into a nice school and take the courses he wanted to take, because he could try out for almost every college in the country, even if they normally weren’t inclusive. Natsuo was Quirkless, but he wasn’t like Izuku, who had to fight for every opportunity he was given.

Shouto still remembered getting the text message from Izuku shortly after Izuku had left his apartment for the last time. Izuku had fought for the right to get into the hero course, and he’d been given it, and his mother had given him the ultimatum — heroics, or a home to live in. And Izuku had made his choice, and Shouto was not surprised, not when he’d first really met him properly as Grey Hat.

Shouto doesn’t think there was ever any other choice at all, doesn’t think that Izuku could have lived with himself if he just let this opportunity pass him by. And as Grey Hat, with no resources and allies, eventually, Izuku’s luck will run out, and he’ll end up alone in an alley, dying. But in heroics, one day Izuku can let go of Grey Hat and just go legal, and heroics might be dangerous, but it’s safer than this, and it’s a guaranteed job, which he knows is hard for Quirkless people to come by.

And then... from what Shouto knows of Izuku’s home life, Shouto isn’t sure how much more Izuku could take at all. Isn’t sure how much longer it would have been before Inko would have kicked him out anyway. Something has been very wrong in that household for a long time.

And here’s the thing — if Izuku was Quirked, Shouto would tell him to go to one of their teachers. Being a UA student, if he got put in the system, no one would want to pull him from something as prestigious as a full scholarship to Heroics in UA —

But Izuku is Quirkless, and so he can’t play by the same rules as the rest of them.

And Shouto knows, because Shouto’s brother is Quirkless, and his beloved Izuku is Quirkless — Shouto knows how the world is not kind to them as well as anyone who hasn’t lived it can hope to know. Shouto knows how wrong it is, and he hates it, but it is out of his hands — He knows almost anyone would pull him not just from heroics but probably from UA almost immediately, because most Quirked people look at Quirkless people and think they are stupid and fragile — or even if they don’t think they are stupid, they don’t want them to be smart, they’re offended by the idea of a smart Quirkless person, offended by the idea of a Quirkless person who is smarter than them.

And Shouto knew all too well that the system was broken when it let heroes like All Might and Endeavor sit on the top — All Might who hurt Izuku over and over and didn’t seem to care about the students he was meant to teach and protect, Endeavor who killed Shouto’s big brother and hurt Shouto and his mother and his sister and his brothers and was a dangerous, deadly hero. The system that let those same heroes stay on top kept his mother in a hospital for eight years with no recourse; it was the same system that didn’t look into Touya’s death or Shouto’s injuries. It was the same system that let Quirkless people die in hospitals without treatment, and didn’t give them protection from discrimination in the workplace or at schools. It was the same system that let lawmakers call them a dying breed as they excluded them from anti-discrimination laws that barely offered any protections for anyone else at all, anyway.

On top of that, Shouto has no reason to believe that Izuku would get put with a family that would be kinder to him than the mother he’d been given who’d only ever given Izuku reasons to cry to Shouto and Hitoshi, or the father who ran away and tried to get his mother to abandon him, who told his mother often he wished Izuku would die. If that was what Izuku got from his blood relatives, why would Shouto trust complete strangers with him?

So when Izuku trusted him with this, told him he knew Shouto would understand that he couldn’t ask for help because he had a Quirkless brother, told him he knew he could trust Shouto with this secret because Shouto already knew his other secret, told him he knew he could trust Shouto because Shouto would understand what it was like, because Shouto understood that the system was broken better than anyone else he knew, Shouto didn’t dare betray that trust by telling him to tell anyone else.

Shouto instead made it a point to help where he could, in every way he could. After all, Izuku had saved him, had changed his life for the better, and then on top of that all was one of Shouto’s two most precious people. Shouto would be doing him a disservice if he didn’t give back everything he could.

And so every morning, Shouto met Izuku somewhere for breakfast. Sometimes it was a cafe, sometimes a diner. They tried not to go to the same place too often. Shouto would bring Izuku his schoolbag if he’d kept it for him that night, as he nearly always did, and Izuku would change into his school uniform. Then they would eat breakfast, and Shouto would pay using his father’s credit card. Izuku had argued at first against this, but Shouto had known all the right things to say to get him to agree without much fuss at all, and from the very beginning, he’d had Izuku fed in the mornings.

Then, when it was clear Izuku was too tired to finish his uniforms in the morning, Shouto took care of that, too. He knew some of his classmates whispered, when he and Hitoshi would pet Izuku’s hair until he woke up and then Shouto would tie his tie for him while Hitoshi kept stroking Izuku’s curls, but Shouto didn’t care about the rumors Ashido and Hagakure whispered.

(That was not quite true. They whispered of a love triangle, argued over who Izuku was dating, and something about that didn’t sit right with Shouto, not when he thought of romance and imagined them both, imagined the three of them together — they weren’t meant to be split apart, separated. No one was a ‘third wheel’; the group wasn’t complete without all three of them together. Shouto loved them both the same, and he knew they both felt the same. He had no doubts; he just knew now was not the time, not when Izuku was struggling so.)

Izuku had tried to start skipping lunches in the afternoons and Shouto had promptly denied him the right and told him to get in line and pick one or he’d pick one himself for him. From then on, Izuku just silently let Shouto buy lunch, until Hitoshi started bringing lunch a few times a week for him. Shouto and Hitoshi took turns with making sure lunch was taken care of, though Hitoshi didn’t seem to really know what was really happening, and then they let Izuku sleep.

They took a lot more lunches outside, where Izuku could lie down against them or rest his head in one of their laps. Yaoyorozu joined them sometimes, as well as Kouda, who particularly seemed to enjoy the outside lunches and would chat with the birds or a few squirrels before sending them on their way. The extra birdsong always put Izuku out like a light quickly, and sometimes Shouto and Hitoshi would have to wake him up towards the end of lunch to feed him the last few bites of food as they got ready to head back to class.

After school, their trio met every day, and when they were done, Shouto and Izuku would leave together. Shouto felt bad, leaving Hitoshi out, but they didn’t want to risk Hitoshi telling someone what Izuku’s mother had done. Of course it was wrong. Of course, Izuku deserved better.

But this was what was safest. They couldn’t count on anyone to help him but themselves. So at the end of the day, they’d go somewhere and Izuku would change clothes, and Shouto would buy him dinner. Sometimes they’d eat together, but most of the time, he had to go home to whatever Fuyumi had made. He’d take Izuku’s bag with him to keep it safe, especially if it was going to rain or Izuku was planning on going on patrol.

Whenever Endeavor was out, Shouto would have Izuku sleep over; he’d tell Fuyumi they were going to study, then Izuku would always ‘stay too late’ and it would ‘be too dangerous to let him just go home’. She knew he was Quirkless; she recognized the shoes. She probably thought he had problems at home and thus said nothing about it. He managed to get away with it at least once a week, and on Sundays, he had studying sessions and Hitoshi came too. They’d use the opportunity to wash Izuku’s clothes then; Shouto would loan Izuku his largest sweaters and some sweatpants and enjoy the way the sweater hung off his shoulders while the clothes were in the wash.

He wished he knew where Izuku was staying at night when he wasn’t patrolling, so he could know Izuku was safe. It would make him feel better.

But it was the one thing Izuku would never tell him, and Shouto was starting to think he patrolled every night and only slept a few hours a night at most.

Because something was wrong; Shouto knew the way Izuku could barely stay awake most of the time was not normal, the way he napped all the time was not normal.

But Shouto didn’t know what else to do. There was no one to turn to for help, after all. Something was wrong with Izuku, but there was no one to turn to for help but himself, but Izuku, and Shouto didn’t know what to do, and Izuku wasn’t going to help himself.

Shouto knew his best friend better than he knew himself. Izuku would always put other people over himself. It was the way he was. So yes, something was wrong with Midoriya Izuku. But Shouto would give his all to help.

It was all he could do.

———

Shinkaika Hana knew something was wrong with her little adopted ‘nephew’. Something had changed, and it had changed suddenly with him. He visited them twice a week — a feat, considering all his extracurriculars, from his vigilantism to his training with Present Mic to his workouts and studying with his ‘friends’ (and from the way he talked about those boys, Hana expected to hear about those boys becoming his boyfriends any day now) and of course having to manage the homework of a school like UA and the demands of a helicopter mother like Midoriya Inko (and Hana did not like that woman, but ooh, she couldn’t do anything about that, now could she?) — and of those twice a week visits, one was only for an hour or two on a school night.

This all was to say that as much as the Shinkaika family loved their Midori, they did not get to see much of him, but it also meant that when something happened, it was clear as day.

He’d started to come for shorter visits and he looked a mess when he did, still dressed in his school uniform and carrying his schoolbag which was filled to the absolute brim — the first time he’d visited with no gifts for them, he’d burst into inconsolable tears. Hana had had to send Momoka upstairs — she knew Midori would never want her to see him like that, and it took nearly half an hour to calm him down and convince him he didn’t have to bring a gift if he wasn’t able.

She knew the tears weren’t really about the gift — and she thinks he knows that too. There was something more going on, something he wasn’t admitting to, something awfully, terribly wrong.

And if he would only tell her, she would help him.

If he would let her, she would give anything she could to save this boy (because when she held him in her arms while he sobbed, it was terribly clear that this is what he was — just a boy, a boy who was forced to grow up too soon) who saved her and her daughter — not just because he was her savior, but because he was so good and kind and he deserved to be saved.

But she knew that he would never tell her enough to let her save him. He would give and give and give until he was empty.

So instead, she held him until he lied and said he was fine, and she fed him and let him tell her and Momoka about his week and she told him about hers, but she knew.

She knew something was terribly, awfully wrong with Midoriya Izuku.

———

Momo noticed something was wrong with Midoriya quite quickly — Yaoyorozu Momo’s friendship with Midoriya Izuku started slowly, started as more of a business transaction, really, and in some ways, some parts of it had remained very consistent like that. Momo noticed Midoriya seemed to enjoy the consistency of a schedule — or at least, if there was to be a break in the schedule, excitement and change, he wanted it to be something more like a hero fight. He seemed to enjoy consistency in his friendships and knowing what to expect, and so she kept their friendship like that, almost transactional — she noticed this even with his crushes (and he wouldn’t admit that to her but he certainly talked like they were), that they tended to follow the same schedule week after week.

(It was cute. He was smart and fun to talk to, and kind. When he’d helped her and the other girls get rid of Mineta after he’d been harassing them for so long, when no one else did anything, she wouldn’t deny she’d had a crush for a moment, but he only really had eyes for Shinsou and Todoroki, and even if she could, she wouldn’t try to get in between that. It wasn’t so hard to move on from someone who was never hers. There were plenty of other people that caught her eye. Momo always was the type to fall in love easily.)

They exchanged emails and texts on an unspoken schedule, talking of Quirk Science and other topics that Momo’s other friends often seemed uninterested in or just didn’t seem to understand. It was nice to have a friend who not only understood these things, but enjoyed them. Some of it, Momo had to know just to use her Quirk, some of it Mother and Father made her learn whether she wanted to or not, but either way, it was much more interesting when it was spoken about by someone who was passionate about it like Midoriya.

And then everything changed, and Momo knew something was wrong.

Midoriya started coming to class, and he was so tired and rumpled. He started replying to her emails, and they were shorter, the passion gone. That didn’t make sense to Momo. She knew Midoriya was more passionate than anyone about the things they talked about — she knew it was just because he was so tired, but that was so worrying to her... why was he so tired? Something was wrong, and even worse, it was not healthy at all for her friend.

She would offer him her finest teas for sleeping to take home, and occasionally, he’d accept, but she didn’t think they did much at all.

She watched as he slept the school day away, and worried, worried, worried.

What was becoming of her friend? Their emails began to waste away until they were barely there at all. She missed Midoriya... but more importantly, she feared for him. She watched those eyebags grow every day, watched as he looked more and more broken, and wondered if anyone outside of their friend group saw.

She wondered what she should do.

Something was wrong with Midoriya Izuku, and Momo was worried. Momo wished she knew what to do.

———

Monoma Neito knows something is wrong with his Class 1-A friend — the alarm bells started going off when Midoriya started messaging him less and less, and now he barely messages at all. In the beginning of their friendship, Midoriya had been, quite frankly, a bit clingy, not that Neito had minded — it was clear that Midoriya had had few, if any friendships before UA, and Neito understood that well, having not had very many himself. Neito, too, tended to cling to the people that he counted as his.

The fact that Midoriya had gone from near constant messages during the daytime outside of class hours to near radio silence — it was concerning. If it had only been that, and if it had been a normal person — that is to say, a non-traumatized person, Neito would assume that Midoriya had decided to forget Neito and move on.

But Midoriya was incredibly traumatized, and Neito doubted he’d just give up on any friendship without warning — he’d heard a bit about the Bakugou saga, after all, and if Midoriya would put up with that for over a decade (and that was evidence that they desperately needed to work on his self-esteem), Neito doubted he’d ditch a friendship for no reason at all.

But he digresses —

That’s not all that has him concerned.

When Neito sees him in the hallways, or at lunch, Midoriya doesn’t look the way he did before. He was put together, at the sports festival. His curls were well-kept; when he had passed him in the hallway before the transfer, his school uniforms were pressed to perfection with only his tie being out of place (a monstrosity, the way he’d tied it before; someone needed to teach him to tie that thing, for God’s sake, before Neito lost it).

But now? He looked like he didn’t always shower, and he certainly didn’t care for his hair or uniforms anymore. He looked like he never slept. If Neito tried to approach him at lunch, Midoriya would smile at him, and it was genuine — they were still friends, for sure. He’d chat for maybe a minute or two, but he was always, always too tired to talk for any longer than that. His little boytoys (he was thinking of being nicer to them, perhaps, since they were on the same side — Midoriya’s side, that is.) were clearly kept busy constantly keeping him from falling apart.

Neito was a good student. He paid attention in class. He knew sudden changes like this were warning signs for a lot of things, and none of them were good.

Something was very wrong. Neito would find out, and he would make sure to get Midoriya through it, because Neito was not the type to be anything less than a friend who gave his all.

(He was only friends with those who deserved it, of course.)

———

Izuku knew this was wrong. He knew that he deserved better than this, too, but it didn’t matter what he deserved. This is what he had. And he was grateful to Shou and Toshi and Hana for doing everything they could to make this better, and he wished he could tell someone and get help.

But he knew the rules, the rules that had been drilled into him since he could access the internet at ten when he got that phone. It wasn’t the same for Quirkless kids, no matter how good he was, no matter how much smarter or stronger or better he was. It would never be safe if he ended up in an orphanage or a foster home, as rare as those were. He had no family that could or would take him in — his father would reject him; his grandparents were all deceased and his parents were both only children. So he would go into the system and it would never, never, never be safe.

Izuku knew what happened to Quirkless kids in the system, had read dozens and dozens of articles about it, all of them horribly biased and awful to read, implying it was a waste of time for the heroes to rescue the trafficked children, implying they were more useful this way — the articles always made Izuku sick to his stomach, some of the worst made him want to vomit. The worst, the ones where there were more dead than alive, where they had been trying to torture a Quirk out of the children, a rare phenomenon that occurs in less than 1% of cases when a Quirkless child is exposed to severe, life or death trauma, and the author of the article would imply that it was a kindness, that it was good, that either the kids were dead and no longer a burden or they would get a Quirk and stop being a waste —

And this was supposed to be okay, and these articles were published in mainstream, big papers — sometimes even the front page, and sometimes these authors would receive awards for these papers, as if they were praise-worthy, as if it didn’t have Izuku grabbing the nearest trash can because it just made him so sick to his stomach.

Quirkless kids were a commodity — sell them and use them in experiments like rats, or use them as servants, or something far more sick that Izuku didn’t even want to think about. Some people bought them and tortured and killed them or just kept them to torture over and over because they didn’t see them as human.

Almost no one saw Quirkless people as human, Izuku knew — we’re subhuman, less than. Not everyone is equal.

And it was easy for them, because no one really cared — you filed a missing person report to the police after you sold your Quirkless charge and they put it to the bottom of the list, because who cares about looking for some Quirkless brat that probably ran away for attention when you can help someone with a Quirk that’s actually going to go somewhere and do something. The Quirkless brat will probably come home soon, and if they don’t — no big loss.

And even if you dodged this. Even if Izuku got lucky and they put him in a rare home that wouldn’t sell him off to his death or a fate worse than death — the home they put him in would almost certainly abuse him, and they’d pull him from UA for sure because they would hate the idea of a Quirkless hero, and a smart Quirkless person would offend them too, and no one would care about any of it, and no one would listen to him. Izuku knows what happens when you complain to the authorities. As soon as they learn you’re Quirkless, you become a liar, an attention seeker — you’re jealous of the person abusing you, jealous of the Quirk they have and you’re trying to ruin their life because they have something you can never have, and you’re a nasty freak.

No, Izuku would never reach out for help with this. It doesn’t matter how bad it gets.

Even if he trusts Yamada-sensei, he still won’t understand. He still won’t understand that Izuku can’t go into the system. He’ll die, one way or another. If they take him from UA, if they take him from his friends and his dreams, he won’t be able to take it. If they sell him off to the wrong people, they’ll kill him. If he’s sold into servitude or off to become an experiment, he’ll either escape or die trying.

He wouldn’t survive the system, but he had to take this opportunity to become a hero. If he gave it up, if he let it pass by, he’d never be able to live with himself.

Even though he tried to be satisfied with vigilantism... it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough, not really. Izuku was selfish. He wanted it all. He wanted to be a hero, no matter the cost. He was willing to sacrifice almost everything he had for this. His crumbling relationship with his mother and that house that was not a home? Giving it up was nothing to him. She hadn’t loved him for years. That house had been void of love for years. Trading it away for a chance at the one thing he had wanted more than anything for as long as he could remember?

That was easy.

So he knew this was wrong, that he deserved to have a roof over his head and a mother and father that loved him and supported him — a mother that didn’t treat him like glass and a father that didn’t think he was better off dead, but he didn’t have that. And so he worked with what he did, and every morning, he let Shouto feed him breakfast so he could keep up his strength — of course, no matter where they went, Izuku made sure to have at least a few cups of black coffee or, if they were somewhere that served it, something with lots of espresso.

After the long night, it was enough to get him through the train ride and walk to UA. Sometimes, he’d tell Shouto about something he’d done during the night as Grey Hat over text, which they’d both delete later. Most of the time, though, they’d just stand together, pressed close together, and Shouto would keep an arm around Izuku’s waist while Izuku would just rest his head on Shouto’s shoulder. It was comfortable.

He would sleep through as much of the morning as he could, to ensure he could get through the classes. He’d been told Class Vice President Iida yelled at him for this often, but Iida was an ass for this — Izuku knew it was written all over his face at this point that he wasn’t getting enough sleep, and clearly he was sleeping because he needed it. Anyway, it was perfectly allowed; it just bothered Iida’s delicate sensibilities.

Well, if the boy ever actually woke him up, Izuku would give him the tongue lashing of his life, and the boy would probably not dare speak again for a week, which would serve him right, but also was probably not a good thing for a hero to do.

After his small nap, Toshi and Shou helped him get ready, and the hair pets were the only reason he didn’t channel his inner Bakugou Katsuki and destroy Iida’s self-esteem while Iida attempted to lecture him and Izuku tuned him out. Izuku would let them pet his hair and Shouto would get out his school things and do his tie for him and it was the best his tie had ever been done — if only his tie wasn’t wrinkled from being crushed under his schoolbooks and vigilante gear.

He could hear Ashido and Hagakure gossip all the while and he wished they would just shut up and let him enjoy this without turning it into something where he had to choose one or the other because he didn’t want to choose one or the other — he couldn’t choose one or the other. They both meant too much to him, were sticking with him even now when he knew he wasn’t the best company, but they’d also each been his first friends. Izuku knew he wasn’t easy to befriend, that he talked too much and focused on the things he liked too much and made it hard sometimes for other people to get a word in at all, and then he had weird ticks that some people were bothered by.

But Toshi and Shou never were bothered by any of it — in fact, they liked him because of it, not despite it. How could Izuku not want them both?

But there was too much to deal with right now. There was no room for redefining their relationship right now. Izuku was not good with social things, he knew that. But he knew that what he, Toshi and Shou shared wasn’t a conventional friendship. He knew he would be very uncomfortable if Yaoyorozu or Kouda or Monoma was this affectionate and if any of the classmates he wasn’t friends with touched him at all outside of training, he’d be tempted to resort to physical violence. He remembered the way hugs from his mother always made him want to be sick.

Classes would pass by in a blur. He would take notes, and he would work his hardest, and every assignment still came back with his grades up to their usual standard, but god, he was exhausted, and it took everything out of him, and by the time lunch came around he was completely drained. He never got enough rest these days. He didn’t have enough money for lunch, and though he’d fought it at first, Shouto had absolutely not allowed it, and he didn’t have the energy to protest — after all, it wasn’t like he was upset by Endeavor’s money being spent, and then Hitoshi started bringing him lunches and it was really futile at that point.

Izuku would eat as much as he could of whatever he was given, and then he’d find himself asleep, wherever they were having lunch. Shouto and Hitoshi seemed to like to have lunch outside the most these days, and Izuku would find himself laying in their laps, relaxed and sleepy often. He’d try to offer a few moments of conversation to Yaoyorozu and Koda, but he often fell asleep in the middle of the conversation if he was outside — Koda attracted birds like no one’s business, and the birdsong made him so sleepy every time.

But his friends were so nice, and they always said they didn’t mind when he woke up and it was time to go back to class. He felt so lucky, even if classes always felt like they were passing by in a blur. In heroics class, he tried his best to be Midoriya, and use the fighting styles he learned under Present Mic, but he knew he was slipping up more and more into his Grey Hat fighting style during training. And then the showers. He couldn’t resist — he took as long as possible... he always felt so dirty, and sometimes he was, in the literal sense, and he’d just scrub and scrub and scrub with that soap bar.

He missed having room for the products he used to use; not that he had followed an especially strict regimen for his hair, but he had took good care of it, and now it was either greasy and matted or a frizzy mess — of course not washing it or washing with a soap bar was bad for it, but it was what he could do; he didn’t have the room in his bag to carry around any sort of bottles of product. He only kept the soap bar and his toothbrush and toothpaste and deodorant, and never, never felt clean.

But so be it.

At the end of the day, it was training with Present Mic or it was studying or maybe a workout with Shou and Toshi, and Izuku was always tired, but it didn’t matter. He’d give his all to that, too, then let Shou and Toshi drag him off to a cat cafe, where he’d sleep until they ran out of time and Shou took him somewhere for dinner — unless it was a night where the Shinkaikas were feeding him dinner. And then after that, he’d find a rooftop to curl up on sleep for a few more hours, before he’d patrol.

He’d changed his patrol habits right away.

He didn’t enjoy sleeping outside much. He felt unsafe, uncertain. He didn’t trust anyone to not attack him, and so even if he got a few hours here and there, it was disjointed, hardly worth anything sleep. He certainly never managed any deep sleep these days between the fear on the streets and the short amounts of time he slept all the rest of the time — if it weren’t for the Sundays where they spent four hours at the cat cafes, he’d probably never get any sleep worth anything at all.

And if he wasn’t going to get worthwhile sleep, he might as well be working, and so he patrolled nearly every night, only taking one random night off a week, unless Shouto invited him to spend the night.

He’d use that one night to use his meager funds, if he had them, to rent a capsule hotel, and he’d sleep and it’d still be disjointed — he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to get rid of that anxiety of sleeping alone, with no one to watch his back, but it was better than being on a rooftop or behind a dumpster.

He knew all this was wrong. He knew he shouldn’t have to live like this, but no one saved kids like him. It was wrong, and it was unfair, but people didn’t care about Quirkless kids. Izuku had to save himself, and that was okay. It was just how it was.

He told himself it was okay, but still, sometimes he wished someone would save him, too. But it didn’t matter if he had silly dreams like that, because they didn’t come true.

So he just had to make it three years, then he’d have a license, and he’d make money and he’d have a home of his own. Just three years. That wasn’t too bad. He’d made it fifteen years now, and he was fine, wasn’t he? So what if it was a little harder now?

It seemed so far away.